September 29, 2021

A few nights ago I drove to the road end at midnight to say goodbye to a friend.

At band practice I learned that my former coworker, Kym, had just died. Unexpectedly, too early, barely 60.

I hadn’t seen Kym in over a year, and it’s been almost three years since we worked together, taking care of people living with dementia at a local assisted living community.

A few days before I left my job there, Kym presented me with a colored pencil drawing of a butterfly, carefully rendered. And the word, “breathe”. She was aware at the time that breathing was something I was struggling to do, every day. She had drawn the one word that might help, a reminder, a balm to help me through a very dark spring. With a simple gesture, a thoughtful drawing she had presented me with the most eloquent and life affirming word. Never shy to speak her mind or her opinion, sometimes loudly with a laugh to shake the walls, she knew in that moment that a quiet gesture was what I needed most. It meant the world to me, and now it is too late to tell her.

I had spent several months trying to breathe, cope, as my family skidded and swerved through a monumental family crisis. Neither Kym nor my other coworkers at the time had any idea just how much of a crisis I was in, and leaving my post as the Life Enrichment director was just one of many casualties from that terrible time.

I took a big breath when I heard the news of Kym’s death, stepped outside to let it sink in, called my husband, then cried. I needed to say it out loud to him, and tell him that I wished for one more visit with Kym and the chance to thank her for her kindness.

Once home I did what I often do when feeling a lot of emotion—I bake. My sweet husband kept me company via FaceTime, sequestered at the other end of the house fighting off his breakthrough case of Covid. My phone propped up against a bunch of bananas, Josh kept me company as I ground up graham crackers and melted chocolate, filling the void I felt with sugar and noise, clattering measuring cups and activity. I wanted to fend off this unexpected death with the sounds of life– try and make sense of it all through the simple act of making Nanaimo Bars.

Once done, I tucked them away to chill, said goodnight to our youngest and my husband, and headed to the beach.

The sky was aglow from a full harvest moon, and the water awash in a solid blue black. The distant hills lay in black bands, where scattered lights from houses and cars shown like jewels through the darkness.

All was quiet at the beach, with only the awkward sound of my shoes slipping and echoing out upon the water. The crunch and grind of stones and sand and shells beneath my feet was deafening in the inky night, and despite my efforts to walk quietly, I felt like an intruder to this still beach. I wished for the feet of an otter, or cat, able to leap silently over places such as this. Better yet, I wished to move as I may in the water—glide through the invisible layers, float effortlessly and expand into infinity without making a sound.

At the waters’ edge I paused to survey the view.

“Good bye, Kym,” I whispered to the water.

I hope she is flying now “with the angels”, as she’d say, that she met at our workplace. Whenever someone died, she would always smile for them—she believed they were finally free to fly. She said she didn’t have time to be sad, there were so many goodbyes she had done throughout her life, and here, at work. I realize now this was how she coped with so much loss. And she understood that death is a gateway to something bigger than all of us, unknowable but not something to fear.

After my goodbye I squatted down to dip my hands in the cold water. As I lifted the sea water to my cheeks, and then to my forehead (a habit I started last year on days when I don’t swim) little lights flickered brightly where my hands had been.

Phosphorescence.

Kym would have celebrated this moment, marveled with me, and laughed her gravelly full belly laugh at the sight of such wondrous sparkles. Tiny shimmering lights lit up the water, and I lifted the light to my cheeks upon the bright wet wave of a splash.

I stood again, and turned to look at the bright moon high in the sky. All around me the faintest whispers lifted up from the beach. I stood stock still listening to the sounds of clams and crabs burbling and blowing bubbles out all across the wet beach. The beach was giving a quiet symphony, steady and incessant, not unlike the patter of rain.

I didn’t cry any more tears that night. I collected a few shells, brought them home, gave them a wash, and set them on my kitchen windowsill—my mini altar to the Salish Sea. A remembrance to Kym.

I tiptoed out into the damp grass with one shell—a moonsnail—that I had found. Through a window carved by waves and rocks and sand, studded with barnacles, I peered at the moon.

Kym peered back, through the moonlight and shadow bound together within this spiral home, in a place with infinite space to breathe.